Timeless
by Crystalazer
Summary: It wasn't much of a home, but that was fine because now, Kakashi didn't have enough time to make it a home anyway. KakashiRin. PostGaiden PreManga. Rated for Character Death.


**Timeless**

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_Post-Gaiden; Pre-Manga Plotline_**  
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**Disclaimer:** Naruto does not belong to me, but to Kishimoto Masashi. He's not even in this particular fic, so...leave me alone already and find pickings elsewhere. Oh, and while you're at it, clean your room.

--

The room was dark. The door was closed. The steady plink-plink of water falling to the wooden panels through the crack in the ceiling added a second rhythm to the consistent battering of rain against the roof of the apartment. He had meant to get that fixed a while ago, but he hadn't found time yet to do it.

A small orange book lay discarded haphazardly on the nearby bed-table, looking as though it would fall off any moment. He hadn't been up to reading that night, a rare event indeed. The mission that night had taken its toll on him. Undressing was too much of a hassle; he just shrugged off his Jounin vest, kicked off his sandals, pulled down the mask, and collapsed on the top mattress, which was, as always, unmade. By the time he woke up each morning, he was already late. There wasn't time to fold the sheets, nor do the laundry. Identical black shirts and pants littered the floor. A spare vest hung on a hook.

He didn't know the exact time he had bought the apartment, but he knew that it was between the times from when he became a Chuunin to when he became a Jounin. _Age six through age twelve. _Something like that.

There was a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom. It wasn't much of a home, but that was fine because now, Kakashi didn't have enough time to make it a home anyway. He didn't even own a couch. It was just as well; there wasn't a living room to put it in. The kitchen was home to three solitary appliances. There was an old fridge from the old couple who lived here before him, a rusty stove he would probably never use, and a sink filled with dirty dishes. There was never time to wash them. The cupboards were probably filled with spider-webs, but there was never time to check. Someone had stuck a few flowers in a coffee cup that stood on the counter, but the flowers had since lost their bright yellow hue and withered. The cup was still there. The water was still dirty.

The walls were white-washed and bare. No decoration of any sort adorned the walls. Kakashi didn't even bother to make his apartment look presentable for guests because he never had guests. He had Jounin and ANBU who were there to tell him that the Hokage needed him for another mission. It's not like they cared whether or not Kakashi's walls were decorated.

The bathroom consisted of a shower, a sink, a wall-mirror, and a toilet. This was the one room in the house he ever bothered cleaning because ninja or not, personal hygiene was important. He just never used _his _bathroom. It was always the ones at HQ because Kakashi spent a lot more time there than he did at his apartment.

The bedroom was the only room out of the three that might have shown any signs of human habitation. Contrary to the rest of the house, which was little more than empty, the bedroom could almost be considered cluttered. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling, shedding more than enough light to the tiny room. A desk stood against the left wall, next to a small board, on which numerous little pieces of paper had been tacked. A single picture frame stood forlornly on the wooden surface of the desk, depicting a smiling blonde man and three kids. Out of the four, only the man and the girl looked happy. The boy on the left, with black hair and goggles, was stuck between a good-natured smirk and a frown. The boy on the right, contrasting silver hair, looked just plain annoyed. He stared at Kakashi. An accusing stare.

A bed with an annoyingly patterned green bed-spread occupied the corner, under the solitary window. It wasn't really even a bed; just two mattresses stacked on top of each other. The lining was wearing away, giving whoever looked a glimpse through the holes at the inner workings of the springs, which were stiff with age, and creaked whenever pressure was applied. It didn't matter to Kakashi. He was used to being uncomfortable. It came as part of the Jounin package.

Hell, it was a lot better than sleeping outside.

It was always that he didn't have enough time. _Missions before home-decorating, _was what he told himself. _I am a shinobi first. _

He was lying out-right to himself, and he knew it. His house was in serious need of repair, but he never found the time to do it. No…he didn't want to do it. He wanted it to stay the same as it always was. He wanted it to stay the same because this was the way it was when _she _had been with him.

It had been two weeks, three days, and counting, since Sensei's death. _The Yondaime Hokage's death. _Kakashi corrected himself. _He's not your sensei anymore. _This was a lie too. Kakashi was trying to distance himself from yet another person who died. Another person he couldn't save. _She _didn't let him go that distance.

--

"Kakashi? Kakashi, open the door." Her voice was muffled by the wood. There was no answer. "Kakashi- I know you're there. Open the door." Her tone was commanding, rising slowly, but still no reply came. "If you don't open the damn door, I'll break it down myself. You know I will."

Slowly, hesitantly, almost, the door creaked open, just enough so she could see a strip of silver hair, pale skin, an eye, black, not red. He wore the mask, of course. Of what she could see of him, his expression was impassive. Like nothing had happened. "I need to be alone right now, Rin." His voice clearly dismissed her.

"Then I'll be alone with you." Her brown eyes, warm and comfortable, stared back resolutely. With a sigh, he opened the door wider and she sidled into the darkened room.

--

She took one look around the kitchen and pursed her lips. Without a word, she walked over to the sink and turned on the water. Rin took her time cleaning Kakashi's apartment. She did it silently, but like everything else, she did it cheerfully and without complaint.

The eighteen-year-old ANBU Captain leaned against the doorway and watched his teammate flit around like a butterfly, scrubbing a spot here and cleaning something there. He felt a little awkward having her clean his house without his consent, but she wouldn't let him help, and since he didn't have a couch, there was no place to sit but the bed and he didn't even want to go there.

Kakashi didn't think like normal teenagers, so those kinds of thoughts didn't even go through his head. No…Rin just made the bed, so he didn't want to mess it up and have her go through the trouble of making it again.

--

"There. I'm done." Rin smiled as Kakashi jerked his head up, mismatched eyes blinking. He had dozed off, still standing against the doorframe. "Your house looks a lot neater now, doesn't it? You should make an effort to keep it this way for a while."

He looked around. The apartment certainly looked different. She smiled at him, and he offered a weak grin back. That was thanks enough for her.

--

She ended up staying with him. He told her that he didn't need to, but she insisted. "Besides," Rin plopped her bag on the floor of the bedroom. "It's closer to the hospital anyway."

He mumbled that he was going to be away on missions most of the time and couldn't come home or see her, but she would have none of it. "You need someone to keep you company and I need a place to stay."

She had never told any of them where she lived. She was simply there, or she wasn't. It wasn't his place to worry about things outside his rank, so he shrugged it off.

--

"…Rin? Rin, wake up! Open your eyes!" He shook her by the shoulders, diluted blood coating his hands. Slowly, her eyelashes fluttered open.

"Hi," She smiled faintly. "…So…I guess this is the end, huh?

"No. No, it's not the end. You need to live, Rin! Live for Konoha! Live for Obito, live for Sensei, live for…" He stopped. Rin smiled. She brought a hand up to caress his masked cheek. It came away damp. He was crying, she realized. _Crying for her._ _The _Hatake Kakashi was breaking Rule Twenty-five, the first and foremost important rule an aspiring ninja learns. She almost laughed.

She coughed instead, splattering a few drops of blood onto his face. He left them to run down his chin and soak into his mask. "You should continue the mission. You don't need me. I'll only slow you down. We don't have that much time left."

He gave a sound of frustration, as if trying to decide what to do. She coughed again, coughs that racked her whole body. Kakashi felt something within him pull a string. It was painful. Was it…fear? No…there was no room in a shinobi's heart for fear. It was…

Straightening up, he laid her head against his chest, holding her almost tenderly, like a porcelain doll that would crack if he held her too tightly and concentrated chakra into his legs.

"What are you talking about?" He asked. "Of course we've got time."

--

He moved with lethal grace and purpose, leaping from tree to tree with an air of anxiety. The ANBU Captain kept at a break-neck speed. The only sound was the wind whistling through his ears.

"Remember when I told you I'd follow you everywhere?" He nodded stiffly, but kept his eyes forward. "Promise me one thing." She paused. "Never, never follow me where I'm going. Promise me this one time, Kakashi."

His step faltered for a moment, then regained its smooth, rushed gait. She looked at his expression. There were words struggling to get out, but he was using everything he had to hold them back. His thin, finely-arched eyebrows twitched and his eyes looked as if they didn't know where his brain or his feet were taking him. They just weren't registering. Finally, he answered.

"I promise."

"…That's good."

--

She was still warm. That fact alone kept him going. Time was fleeting, but she was still alive. She would get better. They were almost there; the medic-nin would heal her and they would go on with the mission and they would succeed. Maybe then, Obito would stop crying. Obito always cried when he was unsure of something. Insecurity was a weakness. It was a waste of tears, really.

--

When he finally reached the designated camp area, he was alone. He wondered if she had said goodbye when she flew, and maybe…maybe he had been just too deaf to hear.

--

"I promised…I promised her I wouldn't follow. I promised…" Those six words he repeated to himself over and over. Six bones in his right arm were crushed, he was dying of blood-loss, and still, he struggled on because it was Rin's dying wish that he didn't follow her. He wasn't about to fail her, too.

"I…" _Obito was dead._ "…won't…" _Sensei was dead._ "…fail." _Rin was dead. _

_Take down the leader. _That was the order. Abandoning the bloody kunai he had been using into the nearest soldier, he broke through the ranks and headed for where he felt the largest and most sinister chakra presence.

_I've only got one shot. _His chakra reserves were low…there was only enough left for a final thrust. It was easier for one person to move through a throng than a throng to move through a throng. It was even easier if that one person was Hatake Kakashi. _There he is._

Kakashi never double-checked his targets. He knew it the moment he saw them.

Time was being ripped apart. The enemy moved too slowly. He moved too fast. His hand moved in a natural sweeping motion. He made contact. He saw red.

--

Kakashi surveyed that blank little room through half-open lids. It looked just the same as it had the last morning, and the morning before that. Heaving himself off the bed, he walked over to the desk and picked up the old, familiar photograph in the wooden frame.

_Obito didn't know he would die in three days._

_Sensei didn't know that he would never see his son grow up._

_Rin didn't know that even after Obito was gone, someone still loved her._

_Kakashi…well, Kakashi didn't really know anything._

Time was immobilized in that little piece of glossy paper.

Maybe just this once…there would be enough of it to clean his apartment a little. Because, Kakashi realized, Rin always had the time. She always had the time to love him.

--

_Fin_

_--_

...Um...yeah. I was in a fluffy mood. Plus, I like writing Kakashi. It's hard, but fun.

_Love it? Hate it? _I'll never know unless you _**review!**_


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